The television has been developed from the beginning of 20th century. The black and white one, the color one, and even the digital television were disclosed for continuous progress. Human being keeps developing the better vision, and improving the science and technology. In 21st century, people still strive for developing new displaying technique. The new generation display could provide more colorful and finer vision.
According to the prior art, the display, such as CRT TV, PC monitor, LCD TV, and PDP TV, is based on 2-D displaying technique. However, the human vision is based on stereoscopy. For achieving the purpose of stereoscopy, it is important to introduce the stereo vision and the motion parallax. In other words, the stereo three-dimensional (3D) video comprises flat image and depth dimension. There are two images displayed respectively for each one of two eyes. Then, the brain receives two different images from each one of two eyes, thereby obtaining the stereo 3D video.
Please refer to FIG. 1. It illustrates a configuration view showing a stereo image photographing system according to the prior art. As shown in the FIG. 1, the stereo image photographing system includes a photographing unit 10; an image data storing unit 30; a signal processing unit 200; a measuring unit 100; a condition setting unit 70; a photographing position calculating unit 40; a photographing control unit 50; a movement control unit 80; and a driving unit 90.
The photographing unit 10 includes a camera for photographing an image and an omni-directional prism. The image data storing unit 30 stores the data of an image photographed by the camera of the photographing unit 10 and the data of a position measured by the measuring unit 100 in correlation with each other. The signal processing unit 200 performs three-dimensional measurement and analysis based on the data of stereo-photographed image and the position data. For the measuring unit 100, a total station or the like as a survey instrument is used. The measuring unit 100 measures the position data thereof by collimating a prism on the photographing unit 10. Here, automatic measurement is executed by utilizing auto-tracking total station. The condition setting unit 70 sets photographing conditions including a photographing range, accuracy, a camera standardized value and the like. The photographing position calculating unit 40 calculates a proper photographing position based on the photographing range, the necessary accuracy and the photographing conditions of the camera/lens set by the condition setting unit 70. In addition, based on the result of preliminary measurement made by the measuring unit 100, the photographing position calculating unit 40 calculates and decides a photographing scheduled position. The photographing control unit 50 allows the movement control unit 80 and the driving unit 90 to move the photographing unit 10 in order to bring the position data indicating the position of the photographing unit 10 measured by the measuring unit 100 into coincidence or rough coincidence with the photographing position data calculated by the photographing position calculating unit 40. Then, when coincidence or rough coincidence is set between the measured position data and the calculated photographing position data, the photographing control unit 50 outputs a timing signal for photographing to the photographing unit 10 and the measuring unit 100. In addition, the photographing control unit 50 sends the position data at the photographing timing to the image data storing unit 30. At this time, the photographed image data sent from the photographing unit 10 is stored in the image data storing unit 30. The movement control unit 80 supplies the moving amount of the photographing unit 10 to the driving unit 90. The driving unit 90 enables the photographing unit 10 to move.
The measuring unit 100 is installed in a position with respect to the object to be measured, where the measuring unit 100 does not interfere with the measurement and the photographing position of the photographing unit 10 can be viewed from the measuring unit 100. If the measuring unit 100 is placed roughly in a photographing start position, the operation will be more efficient. Then, the measuring range of the object to be measured is measured by the measuring unit 100. Further, the position of the omni-directional prism 2 of the photographing unit 10 is measured by the measuring unit 100. Then, the measuring unit 100 transfers the measured data to the photographing control unit 50. The condition setting unit 70 sets photographing condition data regarding the object to be photographed in the photographing position calculating unit 40. The data to be set here includes a lens angle of view, a focal distance, a pixel pitch of the digital camera, planar direction necessary accuracy, depth direction necessary accuracy and so on. The photographing position calculating position unit 40 calculates photographing position data based on such conditions for obtaining depth information of the stereo 3D video. Actually, the depth information of the stereo 3D video could be obtained by several methods. It could be obtained by means of a segmentation-based algorithm to perform the 2D-to-3D conversion, or obtained by means of the laser or infrared rays to detect the objects. However, in practice, the prior art is difficult to implement. When the segmentation-based algorithm is introduced, the result is related on the resolution of the algorithm in response to the color blocks or the moving information of objects. Meanwhile, more and more backgrounds should be added into for obtaining the better result. It should cost a lot of money and spend a lot of time to develop the algorithm. On the other hand, when the laser or infrared rays are introduced, a lot of errors could be caused due to the intensity variation thereof. If the intensity is too weak, the taken images should include a lot of noises, and it is difficult to obtain the depth information with consistence. Therefore, a lot of points are produced in the stereo image generation and hinder the vision of user.
Hence, it needs to provide a system and method for obtaining the stereo 3D video through a single lens camera and a stereo image synthesis, which introduces depth estimation from multi-focus images and depth image based rendering (DIBR) for obtaining the stereo 3D video, simplifies the entire structure and process, is capable of achieving the purpose of automatically obtaining the stereo 3D video and without change of the camera itself, thereby facilitating user to take stereo image, and can rectify those drawbacks of the prior art and solve the above problems.